


Vista has enough

by mp3_1415player



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27777436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mp3_1415player/pseuds/mp3_1415player
Summary: Vista is not a happy girl, and eventually this has consequences...
Comments: 27
Kudos: 241





	Vista has enough

Missy was not happy.  
  
She was also very angry.  
  
Both of these had the same cause; yet again people were treating her like an idiot. Not a child, as sometimes she overheard others claiming was her problem with her teammates and the adults in general, but an _idiot_. She _knew_ she was a child. She was thirteen, for god’s sake. But she wasn’t stupid, had far more experience in being a Ward than _any_ of the rest of them, and it was not her idea of either fun or being helpful to basically be patted on the head and pushed into the corner when she tried to get someone to listen to some of her ideas about how they could do their jobs more effectively.  
  
‘ _It’s because they think I’m just the cute little kid,_ ’ she grumbled to herself in the privacy of her own mind. ‘ _Small and blonde and wearing this stupid costume that makes me look like I’m about eight. That Glenn guy is..._ ’ She shook her head in disgust. She didn’t really know how to express, even to herself, how annoying that man was. And how creepy.  
  
It was bad enough with the rest of the Wards. Dennis at least listened to her sometimes, but not enough to offset the way Carlos basically looked at her like he was tolerating her talking just long enough for her to get bored and go away. Dean just avoided her, probably because he knew about her crush on him, which was not something she could actually _help_ , it just happened. Chris was too wrapped up in his own issues to even notice half the time, and as for _Sophia…_  
  
Missy did not _like_ Sophia.  
  
Which was fair enough, as she was certain the older girl didn’t like _anyone._ Certainly she appeared to go out of her way to be an asshole to basically everyone she met, but she was particularly nasty to Missy herself a lot of the time. And Piggy didn’t seem to care enough to really stop it, Armsmaster probably _would_ but somehow Sophia managed to not _quite_ cross the line when he was around, and so on. It was infuriating, to be honest. Missy was fairly sure that sooner or later Sophia was going to do something very bad indeed, because she seemed to keep getting away with the not quite that bad things somehow. That only encouraged someone like that in her view. And after all, the entire reason she was _in_ the Wards in the first place, unwillingly at that, was because she’d got caught almost killing someone.  
  
It seemed pretty likely that would, inevitably, happen again in the end.  
  
Shaking her head, she sat up then stared out the window of her Wards room in the PRT building at the night sky, trying not to keep going over the same thoughts over and over again as so often happened. She couldn’t do anything about it, except wait. Sooner or later she’d end up old enough to be taken seriously, by which point she’d have nearly as much experience as a superhero as some of the adults did right now. Maybe _then_ someone would actually respect her opinion on something important.  
  
Sighing, she did her best to calm down and stop being angry for no useful reason. It was hard, when she started thinking like this it just built and built until she wanted to scream. Or hit something. Or both.  
  
Neither was really useful and she knew it, but it was very hard not to feel like that.  
  
Especially when her _stupid_ parents were going through one of their particularly passive-aggressive phases, like they were right now. That was why she was here in the PRT building while not on duty in the first place. It was better than being at home and having to hear them snipe at each other for hours and hours. Plus it was a weekend, so she didn’t even have school to distract her from that crap.  
  
Wishing that they’d learn to live together, or just realize they couldn’t and move on, she stood up and walked over to the window, leaning her forehead on the cool glass and looking down at the streets a few stories below. It was a nice if somewhat chilly night, the sky clear and the moon full, the orb low on the horizon and looking far larger than when it was higher up. She knew it was only an illusion but it was still neat.  
  
Staring at it, she idly wished she could just _leave._ Go somewhere else, somewhere where people didn’t talk down to her all the time, ignore her opinions all the time, _pat her on the fucking head_ ** _all the time!_**  
  
Missy took a breath, then another one. Clearly calming down hadn’t actually happened yet.  
  
She turned and walked back over to her bed, flopping face down onto it and grabbing the pillow then _screaming_ into it. Life was _hard_. People were _idiots_. And sometimes she was sure she was the biggest idiot of all for simply putting up with it and not just walking away. She was fairly certain she could make a go of it on her own despite her age. Not being an idiot and having a level of common sense that she sometimes rather maliciously thought almost qualified as _another_ Parahuman ability would probably take her some distance.  
  
The girl snickered into her pillow. Distance. Good one, Missy. That was sort of her entire _thing._  
  
Distance was her bitch.  
  
Sophia, on the other hand, was simply _a_ bitch.  
  
Wishing that she could figure out a way to make the older girl leave her alone without simply killing the asshole, which she’d come up with at least a dozen methods of doing, four of them she was certain being entirely untraceable, she rolled over onto her back with the pillow still over her face. After a while, she dropped it to the side and crossed her arms over her chest, then spent a while scowling at the ceiling.  
  
How could she get people to take her seriously? Was she going to have to put up with this shit for the rest of her life simply because she was petite, blonde, and _cute?_ She had a horrible feeling the answer was probably more yes than otherwise, and didn’t look forward to it at all.  
  
Maybe she _should_ quit, walk away, find something else to do and leave ‘ _Vista_ ’ behind.  
  
One of the problems with that idea, of course, was that the PRT and the Protectorate would go _mental._ Not to mention Youth Guard, who might have been about the most useless bunch of assholes she’d ever had the displeasure of interacting with, but still had a remarkable talent for getting in the way and pissing her off even more than Sophia did. Which was impressive in all the wrong ways.  
  
Another was that she knew in her heart that she _was_ still sort of too young to easily strike out on her own, as much as she didn’t want to admit it. The gangs wouldn’t really care, of course, and without support she would be more vulnerable than she cared to consider to someone like that bastard Kaiser, or worse, Lung. Sure, she had some impressive tricks up her sleeve, things she’d figured out how to do with her power which she hadn’t actually bothered to mention to anyone since it was always a good idea to have an ace in the hole in her view, but she also wasn’t stupid enough to assume that was always going to get her out of trouble. Not unless she took the gloves off and just killed the fuckers, which would get her in trouble she didn’t fancy having to deal with. And she was pretty sure she _could_ kill them with some effort, even if people thought her power was fairly innocuous if very useful.  
  
They didn’t know nearly as much about it as _she_ did and she had no real desire to enlighten them. Not with the sort of crap she had to deal with.  
  
Oh, they weren’t all bad. Armsmaster, despite having the social ability of a concrete block, was one of the easier ones to live with. She rather liked him, in fact. He was so stiff she wondered sometimes if he’d actually fall over if he fell asleep standing up, but at the same time he didn’t try to pretend he was something he wasn’t. He’d simply _tell_ you if he thought you were being an idiot, not pretty it up with the sort of garbage some people used. And he didn’t yell, he just clenched his chin and glared. Which was actually somewhat impressive at times. It even made Sophia shut up, a task that wasn’t easy, as the other girl would keep arguing even with Miss Militia. And, of course, if you did a good job, he’d simply tell you _that_ too with a nod of approval for the efficiency of your work.  
  
She could live with that.  
  
Honestly, she got on better with most of the adult heroes than she did with the rest of the Wards, in her view, even if they _didn’t_ really take her seriously. Assault was totally irreverent to her, but then he was to _everyone_ , even the Director, which took serious balls. He was also hilarious. Battery wasn’t too bad although she did tend to be one of the worst offenders for patting heads. Velocity smiled at her quite a lot, Dauntless was sort of grumpy quite a lot of the time but not too bad… It was Miss Militia who was in some ways the most annoying one.  
  
The older woman was absolutely fixated on keeping the Wards _safe_. Like _anyone_ in this city was ever _safe._ Brockton Bay was totally insane on a good night, and damn near a war zone on a bad one. And being a Parahuman was _more_ likely to get you dragged into that sort of thing that the other way around, even if you _were_ a Ward. Miss Militia _knew_ that. So her constant playing safe and not letting them properly train to handle the sort of shit that happened on a daily basis was, in Missy’s opinion, more than a little short sighted. They should be practicing how to take out the E88 capes properly, not just learning how to run away if they thought trouble was approaching.  
  
This was Brockton Bay. Trouble was _always_ approaching. That’s what it _did_. She could practically smell it by now. But it was also her _home_ and she was going to protect it to the best of her ability, asshole parents and overprotective adults and Sophia the Bitch notwithstanding.  
  
She sighed heavily. Yeah. That sounded good inside the privacy of her own head. She was pretty certain that if she actually _said_ it everyone would laugh, smile at her, and fucking pat her fucking head like she was a dog that had just done something amusing.  
  
Again.  
  
Except Sophia, who would merely sneer and make her stupid face look even more punchable than it normally did, which was very.  
  
The whole thing was a massive and nearly intolerable situation yet one she was stuck with, and it was driving her crazy. She didn’t even want to fight as such, she just wanted a little respect. But as far as she could see the only way to _get_ respect _was_ to fight. The problem with that was that no one would _let_ her, since she was apparently made of glass and would break if dropped.  
  
Momentarily a small and vicious smirk crossed her face. They didn’t know about some of the things that had happened to her, which was probably good, but if they did perhaps they’d stop assuming she was a delicate flower.  
  
She idly felt her stomach through her shirt, tracing the line of a scar she’d stitched herself after one encounter with that dick Hookwolf…  
  
One day she’d probably find herself with a rematch. Next time she might not go so easy on him. He’d said some very rude things and needed a good smackdown to get him to be more polite.  
  
A snort of laughter came from her. Polite. Hookwolf. Yeah, right. He was nearly as unpleasant as Sophia was, although admittedly quite a lot more murdery. Probably.  
  
The girl lay on her bed and stared out at the rising moon past her feet, pondering the unfairness of life even if, or possibly _when_ , one had superpowers. It sucked, as did her situation taken as a whole, but she couldn’t think of any real way out of it other than waiting. One way or another, eventually something would change. With a little luck for the better, but she was more than cynical enough to assume probably the opposite would happen.  
  
Dozing half-asleep she ended up thinking again about her own abilities, and ways to use them that she hadn’t yet considered. She did that a lot and had come up with some very interesting ideas, most of which seemed kind of dangerous and not something she was planning on trying without good reason and privacy. Quite a few of them were probably, if she was correct, more than a little dangerous.  
  
The adults really didn’t have any true idea of what she was capable of, she mused.  
  
Right on the verge of falling asleep, she blinked at the night sky, then an idle thought crossed her mind, making her eyes abruptly snap wide open.  
  
“Holy shit,” she mumbled to herself. Would that actually _work?_  
  
After half an hour’s careful thought, she couldn’t see any reason it _wouldn’t_. Aside from common fucking sense, which was telling her it was a _really_ bad idea.  
  
A really cool one too, but mostly bad.  
  
Missy lay there thinking about it for most of the rest of the night, coming up with a number of variations on a theme, one she’d never considered before. She filed the more dangerous ideas away for future investigation if things went badly enough one day that they were needed. The safer ones, she felt, probably needed some private testing somewhere safe, which was a long way away from anyone else. Just as a proof of concept, of course. So she was probably going to have to figure out how to sneak out for a few hours at some point, when she could do it without anyone else knowing.  
  
As a result of being up much of the night, of course, she was very tired and grumpy in school the next day. But she had quite a mental list of intriguing plans.  
  
**=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=**  
  
It took her nearly two months to manage to arrange things so she could have a day to herself without witnesses, a long way from the city. Her power came in very handy for taking her nearly twenty miles into the countryside up the coast, to an enormous abandoned quarry she’d read about.  
  
The results of her experimentation exceeded her wildest ideas, terrified her utterly, and caused her to be extremely cautious about covering her tracks when she left.  
  
It had been a _lot_ louder than she’d expected…  
  
But she was able to get back to the PRT building even as transport trucks were rolling and heading out of the city. No one noticed in the chaos.  
  
When she had stopped shaking, some hours later in her room, she lay on her bed and plotted. Sooner or later, she was pretty sure based on the way the city seemed to be getting worse by the day, she might have call to resort to what she’d tested. She _hoped_ not, but at least she knew beyond doubt that she had the option if push came to shove.  
  
**=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=**  
  
Four months passed. Four months of being patted on the head, to the point she was almost at the point of taking the next person’s hand off. Four months of being sniped at by Sophia, ignored by Carlos, avoided by Dean, talked down to by Miss Militia, and when she got grumpy once in the wrong place, lectured by Piggot.  
  
It was fair to say that those four months were a strain on her mental fortitude. She was on edge all the time, kept being accused of being moody and snappy (which was in a way true) without anyone really listening as to why, or even inquiring for that matter… No, Missy wasn’t in a good place.  
  
Yet she still managed to keep it together. Somehow. She gritted her teeth and suppressed her annoyance, although Dean was starting to get twitchy around her these days, and just did her job. When she was allowed to, of course, which was less often than she liked. And the whole time the city just slowly fell apart around her without the PRT and the Protectorate really doing much to stop it, as the villains got steadily bolder. The cops were overwhelmed, the hospitals were constantly full with the victims of violence, robberies, and sheer bad luck, and the last time she’d seen poor Panacea the older girl looked to be at least as pissed as Missy was.  
  
She sympathized.  
  
It couldn’t have been easy seeing what she suspected Panacea saw every day. She herself saw far more than she wanted to and it was probably only a fraction of what ended up in hospital.  
  
And the whole time nobody who _could_ do something effective about the hellish state of things _did_. Sure, she knew about the sort of uneasy peace that had kept the city from descending into _total_ chaos for years, but it was clearly balanced on a knife edge and could fall over at any moment. And _would_ , no matter what, sooner or later. She was smart enough to be able to recognize that fact. But there were people who would be able to halt it in its tracks fairly easily, and she couldn’t work out why no one did. Legend turning up for a day, or Eidolon, or even just enough lesser capes from other divisions to make a difference, and they could take out all the major villains in one shot. Without their capes, the Merchants were a bunch of barely lucid incompetents, the ABB were dangerous but something that could be handled by the BBPD, and even the E88 were only difficult due to sheer numbers.  
  
The only villains who didn’t seem to actively be trying to make things even more horrible were the Undersiders, who she personally thought were somewhat impressive if only for their ability to get away cleanly every time, and Über and Leet, who clearly weren’t actually trying very hard. The duo came off as incompetent but she had a pretty shrewd idea they were anything but. It seemed more likely that they were very deftly walking the tightrope between being _too_ incompetent to be taken even remotely seriously, or being too dangerous and having one of the larger gangs try to ‘ _acquire_ ’ their abilities.  
  
After all, they’d managed to survive in Brockton Bay of all places for more than four years now and were still free and independent. That wasn’t trivial to manage, what with all the other gangs and the PRT themselves. So clearly they had something going for them.  
  
The Undersiders were easier to explain, they were quite new, and had exactly the right mix of abilities to be extremely hard to pin down. And there were enough of them to make them a real handful if one _did_ manage to do that, as in the bank robbery a little while ago. That had just been embarrassing…  
  
Not to mention they had Skitter. And Skitter had bees. All the bees.  
  
She shuddered slightly. Missy was somewhat reluctantly impressed with Skitter, on the whole, as the girl had made an outsized impact on the scene in a very short space of time, but the sheer number of creepy-crawlies she tended to surround herself with was a bit much. Even though she quite liked insects, or at least didn’t have a major problem with them. Unlike poor Dennis who was on the verge of developing some sort of complex about the teen villain. She seemed to tick every one of his neuroses in one shot.  
  
Then there was Faultline’s crew, who were _technically_ probably closer to villains than not, but then they were also professional and tended to be scrupulously careful not to do anything in the city itself. They had a reputation that seemed well deserved.  
  
But leaving the minor players aside, because of the main three gangs and the lack of anything approaching a sensible plan to deal with them on the part of the authorities, things just kept getting worse. Nothing changed for the better, or if it did, it quickly turned to shit as if life was just saying “Hah! Fooled you _again!_ ” to them all.  
  
It was infuriating and terrifying in equal quantities. And puzzling too since she was sure it wasn’t something that nobody but herself could see. If _she_ could surely someone with real authority could too and would do something sensible for once? Prevention was better than cure, she’d always heard, but maybe it had just gone on too long. Maybe it _was_ beyond saving.  
  
Or maybe there were simply too many idiots around who had their own reasons for letting things go to shit. She didn’t know, and in a way didn’t actually _care_ any more. Missy wasn’t allowed to help out in any real way, but couldn’t ignore it either because she lived here. Her friends lived here. A quarter of a million innocent people lived here. All of them put in danger because of about a dozen and a half villainous capes and maybe five or six hundred assholes who liked hurting people for various reasons.  
  
She scowled at the ceiling. Something was going to break sooner or later in a really big way and a lot of people were going to end up dead in the fallout, she was pretty convinced of that. In some ways it was a miracle that this hadn’t already happened. The whole situation was _right_ on the verge of tipping over into utter chaos and the organization she was part of didn’t seem to have the faintest inclination to do more than react to the villains as little as they possibly could to maintain the status quo. Missy really couldn’t see how that could work indefinitely, without ultimately allowing one or more of the gangs to end up completely running the city. And she didn’t think that anyone would enjoy the results if that actually happened.  
  
The most annoying thing about the whole situation was that when she started thinking about it like this, she began to believe that Sophia might actually have a couple of good points in her idiotic outlook on life, which was utterly _infuriating._ She didn’t like thinking that the older girl was right in _any_ way.  
  
Sighing heavily, she rolled over onto her stomach and shoved the pillow back under her face with considerable viciousness.  
  
No. Something, at some point in the near future, was going to break. Hard. She could _feel_ it coming, although she had no idea what form it would take. And it was probably something that could easily be prevented if _someone_ would grow a brain and just _do something useful_.  
  
Closing her eyes, she lay there thinking dark thoughts about almost everyone and everything until she finally dozed off. As she fell asleep she resolved that _when_ things finally went to shit, she was going to be ready and people were going to find out that Vista wasn’t quite as cuddly as she looked…  
  
**=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=**  
  
The sound of Missy’s Wards phone trilling in her ear woke her early in the morning, making her emit muffled squeaking sounds into the pillow that had found itself over her head somehow. Finally managing to defeat its clinging embrace and throw it across the room, she sat up in bed rubbing her eyes for a few seconds while blearily wishing something horrible to happen to whoever was sending her texts in the middle of the night.  
  
As she picked the thing up, she was still blinking sleep out of one eye with a scratching sensation that was maddening. The time display said it was actually about half past seven in the morning but that was close enough to the middle of the night considering it was a Sunday and her day off that she felt justifiably aggrieved even so. Blinking as she unlocked the device, she read the text with widening eyes.  
  
“Oh, _shit!_ ” she breathed.  
  
_Wards are directed to immediately prepare for collection and transport to base avoiding waterfront on south side of city. Approximately one hour ago Empire and ABB forces engaged in open conflict throughout this area, causing heavy casualties to bystanders, BBPD personnel, and PRT rapid response teams. Current information suggests ABB Tinker Bakuda deceased due to Victor of E88, Victor heavily wounded by retaliatory strike by Lung, Menja deceased due to action by Oni Lee of ABB. All remaining Parahumans from both gangs out with large quantities of gang members heading towards battle site. Known fatalities include nine PRT staff, five BBPD staff, and two BBFD staff, in addition to a minimum of forty three civilians. Protectorate ENE has deployed and will arrive on site momentarily. Minor villain groups Undersiders and Über & Leet have volunteered to provide search and rescue and evacuation support under truce. This has been granted by order of Director Piggot until the situation is under control. If either group is spotted regard them as currently helpful neutrals. Report acknowledgment of this message and action immediately._  
  
After reading the thing four times to be sure she was actually seeing what she thought she was, Missy quickly used the secure app to send her ID code and an acknowledgment that she had read and understood the urgent message. Quickly jumping out of bed, tiredness entirely forgotten, she rushed into the bathroom and did the required things, only ten minutes later still damp around the face area but ready.  
  
Another message was waiting for her.  
  
_Pickup has been arranged at the corner of Welland and 51st. Code phrase is ‘Artichoke Six Gerbil.’ Report acknowledgment of this message and action immediately._  
  
Again she responded even as she was pulling her light jacket on, as mid April was a little cold for her. “Got to go, emergency,” she shouted to her parents who were staring out of two different bedroom doors at her. After a second she added, “Stay inside, something bad is happening down town,” before hurrying out the door not waiting for a response, which would probably just be some inane question or a complaint. Or both. Running down the street to the corner she looked around, seeing very little traffic. Way in the distance she could hear explosions echoing across the city, and when she moved into Mr Adam’s front yard to see past the big tree halfway down the block she could see several columns of thick smoke rising from a point between the commercial center and the outskirts of the western suburbs, fairly close to the bay.  
  
“Oh my god,” she muttered, staring in horror. Even as she watched, a massive fireball rose into the sky, orange and yellow roiling inside a black smoke cloud, the whole thing turning into a smudge across the brilliantly sunny morning by the time the sound reached her as a rumbling **_BOOM!_**  
  
“What the hell is going on?” she said under her breath a little numbly. She kept staring until she heard a vehicle approaching, looking back to the street to see one of the unmarked and entirely unremarkable PRT vans coming towards her. The only way to distinguish it from any other similar vehicle, of which there were probably hundreds in the city alone, was the fact that when she checked her phone it showed a map with an icon displaying the plate number at the point where the vehicle was now parked near the stop sign.  
  
Walking over, she waited until the passenger, a woman she recognized from the PRT building, one of the people cleared to know her civilian identity, rolled the window down. “Artichoke Six Gerbil,” the woman said.  
  
With a nod, Missy got in as the woman reached back and opened the side door, then pulled it shut behind her even as the van moved away. Inside she found a PRT trooper in his uniform without the helmet on waiting for her, holding one of her costumes. “Hello, Vista,” he said.  
  
“Hi, Trooper Daniels,” she replied, taking the costume and stepping into the back part of the van which was curtained off for privacy. Quickly changing, she adjusted her visor over her face, then went back. “How bad is it?” she asked.  
  
He looked grim, accepting the gym bag she’d put her street clothes into and stowing it. “Bad. Very bad,” he replied.  
  
“What happened?”  
  
“We’re not entirely sure,” the man admitted, sitting down across from her as the van rumbled through the outskirts of the city heading via a very roundabout route to the PRT building. “Ever since Skitter took Lung down, and he managed to escape from Armsmaster, he’s been in a funny mood even for him. Swore eternal vengeance on the Undersiders _and_ us, then vanished for nearly two weeks, until early this morning. Then all hell broke loose. Our best guess to what kicked it off is that Empire assumed he was too weak to respond and if they moved fast they could take over the ABB territory. They’ve been poking around in that area for the last couple of days, there was no response from the ABB, they got cocky and went in with pretty much their entire roster...” He shrugged.  
  
“Shit got real,” she said. The man chuckled grimly.  
  
“That’s one way to put it, yeah. Suddenly everything was on fire. Pissed Lung raging around torching the entire area, Oni Lee popping around with explosives that Bakuda must have come up with considering what they’re doing, Bakuda herself charging into battle with a grenade launcher… It got really complicated and messy _very_ fast. Before anyone could work out what was going on it was a full scale war. Menja got minced by Oni Lee with some sort of explosive that kept exploding for about five minutes, which pissed Kaiser off like you wouldn’t believe, Victor sniped Bakuda in the head so _she’s_ not a problem any more, Lung blew up a gas station right next to _Victor_ which nearly killed the idiot, Hookwolf went after Lung, and that’s when things got _completely_ out of hand.”  
  
Missy stared in disbelief.  
  
“All the time that shit was going on, the normal gang members were shooting the entire place up like they got a special deal on ammo, everything from AKs to RPGs. Never seen anything like it outside an old war movie. Lots of civvies trapped in the wreckage, at least half a dozen of our guys and the BBPD are definitely dead, probably fifty or sixty wounded… Panacea’s on standby at Brockton General but it’s going to need a lot of luck as well as her to save some of the wounded. And they’re still going last I heard, looks like they’re genuinely trying to kill each other this time.”  
  
“What do we do about it?” she asked.  
  
“ _You_ do nothing. Orders are to get you safely to the PRT building and that’s what we’re doing,” the front passenger said, turning around to look at the pair of them. “Daniels, stop giving the kid nightmares.”  
  
“She deserves to know the truth, Filton,” he replied. “Vista might be a kid but she’s got more time under her belt than _I_ do.”  
  
Missy smiled at him. “Thanks.”  
  
“No problem.” He nodded to her. “Filton’s right, though. Orders are the Wards are to report to the PRT building and await further instructions. It’s total chaos right now and no one wants to send any kids no matter how experienced into _that_ shit.”  
  
“The Undersiders are kids,” she pointed out. “ _And_ villains. And _they’re_ helping.”  
  
“They have Skitter.” He shuddered. “I’m not sure she’s even _human_ , but that’s not my problem.”  
  
“She’s kind of cool,” Missy commented under her breath. “ _She_ doesn’t take shit from anyone. And she’s nicer than...” Trailing off, she picked at the skirt of her costume, while he looked at her, then half-smiled.  
  
“Yeah, compared to _her_ I’d probably take Miss Creepy any day,” he snorted. “Got a point there.” Slightly embarrassed but pleased even so she smiled back.  
  
“Regardless, they’re not Wards, you are, so you go to the Wards room and stay there until the people upstairs figure out where you’re needed. Hopefully this shit will blow over soon, but I can pretty much guarantee that there are going to be some kill orders by the end of the day. It’s gone way past the normal sort of crap.”  
  
Missy looked at him, then nodded her understanding. Killing people was what the gangs did for a pastime and most of the time the authorities seemed to look the other way, but even _they_ couldn’t ignore this sort of trouble. If they did, it would never stop.  
  
The woman in the front suddenly swore as the van braked sharply. Everyone grabbed for a handhold, then a thunderous shockwave rolled over them making the vehicle shake and vibrate. Missy held on and stared out the windshield at the absolutely enormous fireball that was fading into smoke high above them. “Jesus _Christ_ what the hell was _that?”_ the driver squawked in horror.  
  
“Looks like the old fuel bunker down at the port just went up,” Trooper Daniels replied grimly. “The one that held fuel for the tugs and the ferry back in the day. Still had about fifty, sixty thousand gallons of diesel in it from what someone once told me. It’s long since gone bad considering it’s been there for fifteen years or so but it’ll still burn.”  
  
“Fuck me, that’s going to leave a mess,” Filton breathed as the van accelerated again. Missy could hear more sirens in the distance than she’d ever heard in her life, mixing with the cacophony of car and building alarms all around them to produce a phenomenal sound track like the end of the world. “Yeah, kill orders for sure. God knows how many people that got. I sure hope they managed to evacuate the area first.”  
  
She tapped her earpiece to activate it and started talking into it quietly on the PRT private channel. After a few seconds she went silent and listened, her face paling a little.  
  
The other three watched her, the driver looking back and forth between her and the road. Eventually she acknowledged the person on the other end and looked back. “Sixty two confirmed dead so far. There was an apartment building about two hundred yards from the fuel depot and it got totaled when the thing went up. They think it could be twice that but no one can get close enough to check, the whole area is burning and covered in fuel. Two BBFD trucks were there too, neither crew made it.” Taking a breath, she added, “Armsmaster is in critical condition, he’s being rushed to Brockton General. Über and Bitch pulled him out from under some rubble, might have saved his life. Apparently Tattletale gave them about ten seconds advance warning, not quite enough to prevent it but enough to get several of our people under cover.”  
  
“Holy shit,” Daniels said in a low voice.  
  
She listened to a message and added, “Dauntless is wounded but not critical, Battery has smoke inhalation damage, not too serious but she’s down for now, and we’ve got another seventeen PRT staff with various wounds, two critical. It would have been a lot worse without Tattletale’s warning. She and Grue are running cover for the evacuation, she’s looking for incoming trouble and he’s blocking sightlines, and Skitter is doing recon too. Leet’s got that camera of his in the air tracking the fight and feeding the control room with the video. They can’t get an aircraft close enough to make things out because of the fires, the thermals are too dangerous and the smoke is blocking the cameras. His Tinker tech can apparently see through it.”  
  
“What the _hell_ is going on today?” Daniels wondered out loud. “Villains saving lives and cooperating with the PRT is a new one on me outside an Endbringer attack.”  
  
“Considering how much Lung is ramped up at the moment that’s not far off the truth,” Filton grumbled in a worried tone. “With Armsmaster out of action I have _no_ fucking idea who’s going to put the bastard down. We’ll need the goddamn Triumvirate at this rate.”  
  
Missy was getting the idea that they’d pretty much forgotten she was here. She felt a sinking sensation that had only gotten worse when Filton had said that Armsmaster was in critical condition. She liked him, as weird as he was, she really didn’t like the ABB at all, and she _hated_ the E88.  
  
Filton kept listening. “Oni Lee...” she paused, cupping a hand over her ear. “That bastard’s down too. Dauntless got him, probably killed the fucker they think. Good.”  
  
Missy nodded full agreement, keeping quiet to hear more. The woman added a moment later, “Lung’s got hold of Alabaster and is… well, he keeps biting parts off him while he burns. And laughing.”  
  
“Ick,” the girl said under her breath, horrified. Even Daniels looked appalled.  
  
“Hookwolf just hit him, he dropped Alabaster and they’re mixing it up again,” Filton reported. “Kaiser and Kreig are killing ABB normals and the E88 normals are engaging our forces and the PRT to keep them bottled up. Rune’s trying to grab Alabaster… Now _she’s_ down, BBPD SWAT got her. Fenja is going after Triumph, and Miss Militia is shooting at _her_. Jesus, this is getting insane.”  
  
With no warning or prelude a brilliant flash lit the area and the van died and coasted to a stop in the middle of the road. Filton shook her head, blinking, then tapped her earpiece. “Control? Come in, control.” After a pause, she said, “Anyone got a link to base?”  
  
Daniels picked up his helmet and put it on, then took it off again a few seconds later. “Dead,” he said worriedly. “No response.”  
  
Missy checked her Wards phone, which was working but showing no signal, then her ordinary one which was doing the same thing. “No cell signal,” she commented uneasily. “What was that flash?”  
  
The driver turned the key a few times, producing a clicking sound but nothing else. He tried the radio, then the lights, neither of which worked. “I’m guessing something Bakuda left Lung,” he growled. “Pretty sure that was an EMP of some sort. Must have taken out half the city’s electrical grid, and it’s fucked the electronics in the engine too. Bet it shut down the entire communications net for miles.”  
  
He thumped the steering wheel in disgust, then turned to Filton. “Now what?”  
  
The woman shrugged, looking out the side window, then the windscreen. “We still need to get Vista to base. If the van’s dead, we’ll need other transportation.”  
  
“Unless you can find a twenty or thirty year old car nothing out there is likely to work any better than this piece of shit,” he replied. Taking the keys out of the ignition he opened the door and got out, looking around, before climbing back in. “We’re only about a mile and a half away to the north-east. It should be safe enough to go on foot. All the action is on the other side of the PRT facility.”  
  
“I can do something about that,” Missy put in with a shrug. “It’s kind of my thing.”  
  
“Yeah, good point,” Filton nodded after looking at her. “Slipped my mind for a second. OK, fine, we’ll do that. Take the weapons and anything classified in case some asshole decides to break into this thing before we can come back for it.” Daniels got out and together with the driver they pushed the van, Filton steering, to the side of the road and got it reasonably well parked. Missy retrieved her bag, then while no one was looking grabbed one of the pistols and a pair of loaded magazines out of the small armory under the back seat along with a box of spare ammunition. Just in case, and because she knew no one would actually let her have one if she asked. She slipped everything into her bag and zipped it up before Daniels got in again and started loading up three of the standard backpacks the van was equipped with.  
  
It didn’t take long for him to snag everything of real value in the van while Filton and the still-unnamed driver kept an eye out for any trouble, although Missy thought for a moment he’d noticed the missing weapon when he seemed to hesitate in the process of removing all the remaining ones. But nothing happened, he just finished his task, then locked everything up again and handed the packs to the other two, pulling his own on after that and climbing out once more. She followed and the driver locked the vehicle, walking around it to make sure all the doors were secure, then rejoined the rest of them. “Nothing else I can do with the electronics dead,” he commented. “If someone manages to steal it, they’re welcome to the thing, it’s no skin off my nose. I didn’t pay for it.”  
  
Missy snickered and he smiled a little. “So what do we do?” he asked.  
  
“I do the work, you just follow me,” she said, looking around for a suitably high point. Picking the flat roof of a building about two hundred yards away on the next corner, she pointed at it and did the very familiar internal action that made her power turn space into a pretzel. It was so instinctive these days it took almost no effort.  
  
“God, that looks bizarre,” Filton muttered in slight awe. “Now what?”  
  
“Just walk through,” Missy replied, doing exactly that, to end up on the roof she’d aimed for. The three troopers followed, slightly hesitantly, and seemed impressed when they worked out how simple it was. There was almost no sensation produced by walking through one of her spatial warps other than a very slight momentary disorientation that she’d long since learned to ignore to the point it was almost unnoticeable. She released the warped space which snapped back into shape instantly.  
  
“OK, I’m impressed,” Daniels remarked. Missy smiled as she peered about. She couldn’t quite make out the PRT building from here since there were too many other fairly tall structures around and she was looking for one that had a suitable roof for her purposes. They didn’t run that many patrols in this part of the city for some reason so she wasn’t as familiar with it as she probably should have been.  
  
The background sound track of alarms and sirens had gone eerily quiet following the flash of whatever Tinker device it had been going off, but now that those noises were gone she could easily if faintly hear a ridiculous amount of gunfire mixed with intermittent explosions, a zapping sound that she recognized as Dauntless’s arc lance firing, and a weird roaring that she eventually worked out was Lung in a real snit. If anything, this whole mixture was getting steadily more complex, which was more than slightly worrying.  
  
She could see that her companions could also hear it and understood what it was. “That’s not good,” Filton muttered.  
  
Daniels pointed to where a blast of fire shot up from some source on the ground, the color almost white from the temperature. “That’s worse,” he said. “Lung’s going to be damn near unstoppable by now.”  
  
Missy watched the fire die down, then shook her head and activated her power having found a suitable destination. Moments later they were on top of an eight story building a few hundred yards from the first one, closer to the water. Casting about for the shortest route, she quickly found another contender, the roof of the Brockton Bay Mutual Insurance building, from which she knew she’d be able to see the PRT one. Another flex of her power and they were a quarter of a mile away.  
  
The smell of smoke and burning wood and plastic was much stronger here, downwind of the conflagration raging between the center of the city and the old dockyards. There was a massive cloud of grey-black rising across several blocks, easily visible from this position, with flames licking up at the base. Flashes and hints of motion could be seen through it every now and then, the main battle apparently being on the other side, and she could also see two separate sources of black smoke rising at widely separated points nearly a mile away.  
  
Daniels pointed at one, his face grim. “That’s a crash site,” he said bleakly. “Seen it before, just like that. Looks like that EMP probably shot down any aircraft we had up. Or a news chopper, maybe.”  
  
“Another one over there,” their driver remarked, drawing their attention to somewhere in the eastern suburbs. Missy looked to see more black smoke rising half a mile away.  
  
“God, this is bad,” Filton muttered. “Kill orders all around, bet you anything. This isn’t a gang fight, this is full blown no holds barred terrorism.”  
  
“Yeah,” Daniels agreed quietly. “If we can actually stop the fuckers, I doubt most of them will get as far as the Birdcage after this.”  
  
“Only the lucky ones,” the driver said with a grimace.  
  
Missy looked at them all, then turned her attention to the helipad on top of the PRT building which was now easily in range. Of course, ‘ _in range_ ’ was basically anything in line of sight, although most people didn’t really seem to understand what that meant. They just assumed it was a mile or so, but the limitation was pretty much just being able to see the destination. Which she now could.  
  
Doing the familiar operation she collapsed the distance between where they were and where they needed to be, then all four took two paces and she let space go back to being normal, which it did with relief. They found themselves in the midst of controlled chaos as about two dozen people ran around on the helipad, some of them trying to get the only aircraft there going apparently without any success, another half dozen rapidly working on the various communications systems around the edges of the roof, while the remainder stood guard.  
  
Pretty much everyone whipped around when they unexpectedly appeared in the middle of the area, then the sergeant in charge of the guards barked an order and the weapons were lowered. “Filton, Daniels, Smith, glad you could join us. We were wondering where you were.”  
  
Filton and the others saluted. “Sorry, Sergeant, we had an unexpected equipment failure.”  
  
“You and the rest of the city,” he growled. “Fucking Tinkers. That EMP took out everything inside two miles best we can work out. No comms at all, hardly any power, most of the vehicles including all the aircraft are out of commission… It’s not good.”  
  
“Thanks to Vista we got here as quick as we could,” the woman went on. “What do you need us to do?”  
  
“We’re digging out the old analog radios from storage, Kid Win said they’ll probably work since they were turned off and they’re old enough not to have been so badly affected anyway,” the sergeant replied, holding up a much larger radio than the usual sort. “Get down there and get one each, then stand by for orders. We can’t do much more until we can find out what the fuck is happening.”  
  
Another explosion echoed across the city.  
  
“Aside from world war three, you mean?” the driver, apparently called Smith, remarked sourly.  
  
“Aside from that, yes,” the older man sighed. “Vista, thanks for the help. You’d better get downstairs. They got the backup mechanical locking system working on the Wards room so it’s secure. I’ll let the Director know you made it.”  
  
“OK,” she said. Turning to the three troopers, she added, “Be careful,” to them with a smile.  
  
Daniels smiled back. “You too. Thanks.”  
  
With a wave she headed for the entrance to the building, realizing just as she was about to turn left that the elevators wouldn’t be working, and went right with a sigh. Fifteen flights later, which she cheated horribly with, she was standing outside the Wards room, hammering on the door with a fist. “It’s me, open up,” she shouted.  
  
“Vista? You made it?” A faint familiar voice called back from inside. “Hold on, this thing sticks,” Dennis added, a couple of thumps making the door vibrate, then it clicked and opened. He waved her inside and quickly closed it. “God, I’m glad you’re OK,” he said when it was locked again. The red headed boy seemed worried. “Any idea what’s going on?”  
  
“It’s totally crazy out there,” she replied, putting her bag on one of the sofas and sitting next to it, then looking around. “Where’s everyone else?”  
  
“Chris is helping the techs try to get the power back on, Carlos is giving a hand down in the motor pool since he knows a lot about cars, Dean is getting some more food for us, and Sophia is sulking in her room since Director Piggot spent about ten minutes shouting at her when she wanted to go our and hunt Empire mooks for sport or something.” Dennis shrugged. “For once I can’t say I disagree.”  
  
“Yeah,” Missy sighed. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff I saw from the roof.” She brightened up and grinned at him. “But I hear that your favorite villain is helping people too. Maybe she’ll come here!”  
  
He paled and shuddered. “Oh, thank you very much indeed,” the boy murmured, looking ill. “Just what I need on top of everything else.”  
  
“She might even bring us some bees! Or spiders! Or spiderbees!”  
  
Missy snickered, amused despite the situation at his desolate expression.  
  
“Don’t joke about the biblical plague that walks like a girl,” he hissed, looking around in a paranoid fashion. “She might hear you and take you up on it and if that happens I’ll have no choice but to scream and run.”  
  
She giggled a little, then got up and hugged him briefly. “I’ll protect you from the scary bug lady,” she promised him.  
  
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” he replied, but he looked mildly pleased.  
  
He went over to the fridge and rummaged around in it, then came back with a couple of cans of soda and dropped onto the sofa next to her, handing her one. “What do you think is going to happen?” the boy asked as he popped the tab on his can, sounding worried but not in a ‘ _Skitter might hear me’_ manner this time. “It’s never been this bad. Not even close. Armsmaster in hospital, dozens of our people dead, maybe _hundreds_ of normal people dead, god knows how much of the city blown up or burning or blown up _and_ burning… They can’t just pretend this didn’t happen when it’s over.”  
  
Taking a long drink, he added when he lowered the can, “Assuming it actually _stops_ of course.”  
  
The room gently shuddered in a disturbingly well timed counterpoint to his comment, making them both look around for a moment.  
  
“No idea,” she admitted. “But the troopers that picked me up said it was going to be kill orders all around. Lung for sure, probably half the E88 capes too.”  
  
“That only works if they can actually _get_ them,” he pointed out. “And _they’ll_ know that too so they don’t have anything to lose now. God knows what effect that’ll have.”  
  
She nodded soberly, opening her own can and drinking half of it. A sound behind them made her look to see Sophia come out of the residential area, walk past them with a sneer in their direction, open the fridge and take some cans and a couple of sandwiches, close it, sneer her way past again, and vanish once more.  
  
“Ah, Sophia, always lighting up a room merely by walking into it,” Dennis quipped with a shrug.  
  
“Yeah,” she agreed. They sat there in the room lit only by the sunlight coming in through the windows for some time, listening to the distant battle ebb and flow.  
  
Without any of the usual things to do, since the power was likely to be off for some time and obviously none of the computers worked, both of them ended up playing games on their phones. Missy was slightly impressed that the devices actually functioned at all but wasn’t going to complain. Dennis asked her quite a few questions about what she’d seen on the way in but the answers seemed to make him less happy than ignorance would have been so in the end he fell silent. About half an hour after she’d arrived, there was another knock on the door, making both of them look at it.  
  
“It’s Gallant,” a familiar voice called. Dennis went over, looked through the little optical peephole that was the backup for the currently useless camera system, then unlocked the door and pulled it open. Dean and Chris walked in, both carrying cardboard boxes full of cardboard-topped aluminum food containers from the cafeteria on the third floor. The enticing scent of several sorts of food immediately filled the room. Dennis got halfway through closing the door again when a shout from the corridor made him open it once more to admit Carlos. Finally closing the door and locking it once more, he followed the other three to the main table in the common area.  
  
Chris and Dean put their loads down and stepped back. The former also had a tactical backpack over his shoulder, which he took off and put on the floor. “Sorry it took so long, they’re cooking over propane stoves at the moment,” Dean said as he started unpacking the food. “I got some of everything. It’s kind of a limited menu, they’re using up all the really perishable stuff before it goes bad, but it’s hot and edible.”  
  
“Fine by me,” Carlos commented, bending over the array of food and inspecting the scrawled marker writing on the lids. “Oh, great, chicken curry. I love that.”  
  
Missy busied herself retrieving cutlery from the small kitchen attached to the Wards area, and shortly all of them were sitting down eating. She was starving herself not having had time to get breakfast and even the worry about the current situation didn’t stop her dealing with that problem. A few minutes later, Sophia came out of her room and wandered in, looking generally pissed off with the world, which wasn’t really unusual, and stared at them.  
  
Carlos glanced at her, then pointed at one of the containers with his fork. “You like fish stew, right? Dig in.”  
  
The dark-skinned girl glared at them all, apparently in a foul mood even for her, but after another ten seconds sighed theatrically, grabbed the container and a fork Missy held out without a word, and sat at the far end of the table, not looking at them as she started eating.  
  
“Would it kill you to say thanks?” Chris commented, concentrating on his food.  
  
“Fuck off, dweeb,” she hissed, but didn’t add anything and the normal level of animosity was somewhat subdued. The others exchanged glances, shrugged, and kept eating.  
  
When they’d all finished, Carlos put the remaining food in the fridge, more to get it out of the way than anything else, while Dennis collected all the forks and dumped them into the sink. Both of them sat down again and they all looked at each other.  
  
“Now what?” Dennis asked.  
  
“We should be out there kicking ass,” Sophia snarled. “Fucking Piggy. I can take care of myself.”  
  
“Don’t be an idiot, Sophia,” Carlos said with a put-upon sigh. “ _Armsmaster_ is in the hospital, and half the other Protectorate people are injured as well. Hundreds of people are dead last I heard, including dozens of PRT troopers. The entire train yard and everything from for ten blocks in every direction _is on fire!_ You’d end up dead, no matter what your powers are. Lung’s got to be unstoppable by this point, and there are still probably a couple of hundred gangers shooting anything that moves.”  
  
“At this rate we’re going to need the National Guard to deal just with _them_ never mind the Empire capes and Lung,” Dean added, scowling. “I have no idea _who’s_ going to take _him_ down if he doesn’t get bored and stop.”  
  
“Why aren’t the Triumvirate here already?” Dennis queried, looking disturbed. “We should be up to our necks in capes and reinforcements but… where are they? Have they decided to just _let_ this happen or something?” His voice cracked a little as he spoke. “My family’s out there,” he added more quietly.  
  
Missy put her hand on his for a moment and squeezed it, feeling him trembling with suppressed emotion.  
  
“Mine too,” she said. “Same with all of us. But we’re supposed to stay here. I don’t like it any more than anyone else...”  
  
“Oh, like _you_ could do something,” Sophia spat. “You haven’t got the guts to do what’s needed in a situation like this, pipsqueak.”  
  
Very slowly Missy turned her head and met Sophia’s eyes, which widened a little, directly. “One day, Sophia,” she said very calmly and softly, “you’re going to find out just how much I can ‘ _do what’s needed_.’”  
  
She made little finger quotes.  
  
No one said anything for a moment although all of them were staring at her. Dean’s expression was odd, she noticed, but she ignored him. Sophia was really getting on her nerves, which wasn’t at all unusual, she got on _everyone’s_ nerves _all the time_ , but this time it was even more annoying because Missy was thinking the other girl was actually right for once.  
  
They _should_ be out there doing something.  
  
Looking away after holding Sophia’s gaze for several seconds, the older girl apparently seeing something that confused her, she got up and dug out another can of slowly warming soda, then retired to the sofa and picked up her phone to resume her game. Until someone came and told them what was going on and what to do, they didn’t really have a choice. And by the intermittent vibrations from distant explosions that kept shaking the room ever so slightly the insanity was still going on.  
  
She wondered just how much ammunition the idiot gangs actually _had…_  
  
And how many people they had left. Even in Brockton Bay there wasn’t an infinite supply of racists and thugs. Probably.  
  
The sole upside she could see to the current situation was that when it finally ended, assuming that anything was left, that supply would be very depleted indeed and with luck the gangs would be out of capes. Not that this necessarily was certain to happen, since it rather relied on the _gangs_ running out of enthusiasm and resources before the authorities did, and she gave it about even chances considering where they were.  
  
“They can’t just abandon Brockton, can they?” Dennis said after there had been silence for some time. “I mean, they have to come and put a stop to this. Right?”  
  
Missy glanced up, seeing Dean and Carlos exchange a look. “You’d think so but then… why didn’t someone do something about the gangs years ago?” Carlos replied heavily. “I can’t help thinking that if someone had actually wanted to put the effort in, the E88 and the Merchants at least could have been dealt with. I mean the Merchants are _idiots!_ Skidmark is a complete asshole who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions on the heel, but somehow he’s managed to keep his shitty little gang going for nearly eight years? What’s _that_ about? And the E88 are literally _Nazis_ for fuck’s sake. We fought world war two against those fuckers and now they wander around like they owned the place?”  
  
Everyone, even Sophia, stared at him as his voice rose. He realized this after a few seconds and looked around a little shamefaced. “Sorry. Got carried away,” he muttered.  
  
“You’ve got a point for sure,” Dean commented, leaning back so far in his chair it creaked, and letting his arms dangle as he looked at the ceiling. “I can sort of get the ABB, with Lung there they probably didn’t have too much choice without risking… well, what’s happening right now, but I can’t work out why someone hasn’t shot Kaiser or Victor years ago. Or most of the others for that matter. Hookwolf is a bit tricky but Alexandria could take him down without even trying. Alabaster’s basically only got one trick and that’s easily handled if you do it right… It doesn’t make any sense, never has done.”  
  
“Well, it’s all gone to shit _now_ ,” Sophia snarled, stomping over to the fridge and yanking it open viciously enough to make a couple of things fall out of it. She picked them up and shoved them back inside, swearing when one fell out again, grabbed the plastic bottle of juice, and threw it at the wall. No one said anything as she found what she was looking for and slammed the door again. “If we’d been allowed to do what was needed years ago none of this would be happening. So fuck them all, I’ll just wait until they beg for my help and laugh. Ha ha.”  
  
It wasn’t really a laugh, Missy thought as she watched the other girl stalk back to her room while unscrewing the lid of the bottle of cranberry juice.  
  
Unfortunately, again, Sophia was basically right though.  
  
They all looked at each other, then Chris suddenly seemed to remember something. “Oh, right, radios.” He bent down and picked up the pack he’d come in with, opening it and pulling out four of the old model radios the PRT had stopped using about a decade ago in favor of the new encrypted digital ones they now had. “These have been issued to all the people in the field. They still work, but the range isn’t as good as it should be since the repeater network is mostly down right now. I managed to grab these, all the rest have been issued.”  
  
Dennis picked one up and looked at it, then turned it on. Rotating the volume knob a little he listened, before shaking it. “Nothing’s happening.”  
  
“Here, this is how they work,” Chris told him, retrieving the thing and explaining the controls. Missy went over to listen as he showed how to select the assigned channels, turn the squelch on and off, and transmit. “It’s not like the modern ones, if you transmit everyone on the same channel can hear you if they’re in range, and the analog encryption is really crap, but they work,” he commented, turning the channel selector control. “Channel twelve is the all stations one, channels one through eleven are specific departments, channel thirteen is Wards.”  
  
“Lucky, that,” Dennis said with a smaller than usual smile.  
  
“Fourteen is Protectorate control, fifteen and sixteen are BBPD and BBFD respectively,” Chris went on, almost smiling himself. “No one’s using the other sixteen channels at the moment. There’s a list on the back here.” He showed them.  
  
Missy picked one of the other radios up and turned it on, then stepped through the first eleven channels. Two of them just produced silence, one had some sort of hammering sound that they recognized after a moment as a heavy machine gun firing in bursts along with a lot of people shouting, while the rest had snippets of urgent communications from various people in the field. Switching to channel twelve she flinched as a scream came through the radio she was holding, shockingly loud in the silent Wards room, followed by a sound like the world’s largest blowtorch, before it went dead.  
  
“Oh, Jesus,” Carlos whispered, his face much paler than usual. “That was...”  
  
“Lung,” Missy finished for him when he didn’t seem able to. “Killing someone.”  
  
“Yeah,” the boy said faintly, his eyes fixated on the radio. She turned it off and put it down, then propped her chin on her hands and stared at it while the others got up and moved around the room as if they were trying to forget what they’d heard.  
  
Ten minutes later she nodded to herself, picked the radio up, collected her bag on the way to the door, and went through it before anyone could say anything. By the time her friends looked out, startled, she was long gone.  
  
**=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=**  
  
When she was far enough away from the PRT building to be sure that no one was following, not that anyone except possibly Carlos or Chris _could_ follow her right now even if they were allowed to, Missy put her bag down and knelt on the roof of the warehouse she was on top of next to it. Unzipping the bag, she removed the standard-issue 10mm automatic pistol she’d ‘ _borrowed_ ’, along with the magazines and spare ammo. Checking the weapon over, thankful that she’d been bored enough on console duty to read all the manuals available on the PRT system, she slotted the magazine in and clicked it home, then worked the action to chamber a round. Sighting down the gun she aimed it towards the sea and made sure everything was in order, before putting the safety on and slipping it into the small folding backpack she kept in the larger gym bag for carrying dirty washing in. The remaining magazines and ammo went in too, then she made sure that both her phones were in her costume’s internal pockets, and clipped the radio to her belt.  
  
Looking around she spotted a vent duct on the side the little structure that seemed to hold air conditioning equipment. She went over to it and peered into the vent, seeing that it was just large enough for her pack. A momentary flex of her power made the space between the slats of the vent cover about two feet across, which let her push the bag inside, then she allowed things to return to normal. The bag was now well hidden and only someone who actually either knew it was there or went looking for it was likely to find it, and _getting_ at it would require dismantling quite a lot of the vent system.  
  
Satisfied that her stuff was safe, she put the straps of the smaller pack over her shoulders, adjusting it so she could easily reach back to get the gun out, then walked over to the edge of the roof and looked towards where smoke, flames and utter chaos was happening. After a moment, she took the radio in hand and turned it on, slowly clicking through the channels. There was a hell of a lot of chatter on all the field operations channels, people shouting at cross purposes and calling for backup, which she was fairly sure wasn’t going to be coming. When she reached the Wards channel on 13 she paused as she heard Dennis’s voice.  
  
“ _Vista. Come in, please, Vista_.” He sounded very worried.  
  
She shook her head and moved to the next channel. “Sorry, guys, I need to do this alone,” she mumbled, listening to the Protectorate channel where someone she didn’t recognize the voice of was reporting that Armsmaster was now healed, but the hospital was having serious problems due to the power being down. Over a dozen deaths had already happened before Panacea could get to them, and reading between the lines of the rather sparse report she imagined that the poor girl was probably running herself into the ground. And even so, it seemed likely she wouldn’t be able to save everyone no matter how good she was.  
  
After listening to Miss Militia check in as well, the heroine’s voice muffled and raspy, with gunshots going off in the background, she checked both the PD and FD channels, finding again a lot of traffic mostly reporting armed gang members causing total chaos and killing everyone in sight. She scowled and put the radio back on her belt, switching to the general call channel and turning the volume down to a level where she could hear it but it wasn’t intrusive. That was still fairly audible considering how much background noise there was.  
  
“I’ve just about fucking had enough of this,” she growled under her breath, using her power to make the space in front of her warp enough to bend light. It was something she’d been playing with for a while but hadn’t really mentioned to anyone, and it was a variation on the thing they _did_ see her do which made space between her and a distant point small enough to allow her to look through it. That technique had the down side of leaving a visible distortion all the way to the target. This, as it basically made a set of ‘ _virtual_ ’ lenses right in front of her, didn’t.  
  
It had taken her a while to make it work right but the end result was satisfyingly effective, giving her a telescopic vision ability that was pretty good. She peered through the distorted space which made everything a couple of miles away look close enough to touch, until she found a tallish structure some distance from the zone of total destruction but close enough to get a good view of what was happening.  
  
With a minor effort, she formed a warp between where she was and where she wasn’t, then walked through so she was where she hadn’t been. Allowing the warp to vanish behind her without looking back she moved to the edge of the new roof.  
  
“Oh my god,” she breathed in horror.  
  
The destruction was _unbelievable._ At least twenty or thirty blocks of what had yesterday been a light industrial zone bounded on two sides by low-income apartment buildings was _gone_. Utterly razed to the ground, only piles of debris stretching out all the way to the waterfront, with a grid of slightly more open areas showing where the roads had been. Fires were burning everywhere, dozens of them at least, and there were several scars across the rubble where even that was complete gone, only scorch marks and a glassy surface bearing witness to what must have been appallingly high temperatures. It looked like the aftermath of an alien invasion as imagined by Hollywood. Even upwind as she was at the moment, the entire area stank of burning, plastic and wood and fuel and things she didn’t want to think about all mixing together into a miasma unlike anything she’d ever imagined.  
  
Dozens of craters of various sizes pockmarked a scene of apocalyptic ruination, and even through the pall of smoke that hung over the entire area she could make out the wreckage of a large number of vehicles, including a BBPD SWAT truck, at least seven PRT armored personnel carriers, three fire engines, and any number of civilian ones. None of them were intact, most being merely burned out shells that were still smoking, and one of the fire engines was sliced completely in half, the rear part a hundred yards down the road from what was left of the front. It was abundantly clear that none of the people in any of the vehicles could possibly have survived if they hadn’t had a chance to run.  
  
Bearing in mind that when she used her light warping trick to examine one of the PRT trucks she could see the charred remains of a person, she was horribly certain that a lot of them hadn’t had that chance at all.  
  
Turning her head away she breathed heavily for a few seconds, trying not to think about it, before grimly returning to scanning the entire battlefield. She needed to see what she was dealing with. Good recon was key, the books she’d read had told her.  
  
What had to be the source of that monstrously large explosion during the drive in, that Daniels had said was the old fuel storage bunker, was immediately obvious. It was near the edge of the bay and was basically just a huge blackened hole with twisted metal fragments spread out in a circle around it, the hole itself still billowing flames under a huge column of deep black smoke which was blowing out across the water in the southerly breeze. Nothing recognizable of the structure itself was left standing more than a foot tall.  
  
Off to the left she could see a larger pile of rubble than most of the others, filling a space that was on the corner of two roads. Several wrecked emergency vehicles were smoking outside it and she assumed that was probably the apartment building that had collapsed due to the blast. It was only about three hundred yards from the huge crater in direct line of sight of it, so the shock wave must have hit it dead on, the old building no match for the explosion. Hardly anything was recognizable other than part of a bathtub sticking out from under a mound of bricks near the top, only that really showing what had once stood there.  
  
Feeling more and more anger building deep inside her, she kept looking around, seeing if there was anyone left alive in all that mess. Missy spotted movement in a few places and concentrated on them, noting the locations of a number of both ABB and E88 gang members prowling through the destroyed streets, weapons ready to fire. One party of six E88 were carrying some sort of rocket launcher with them along with several machine guns, including one huge one that was over the shoulder of the biggest ganger. All of them were scorched and filthy, with a couple of bandages evident, but minor injuries didn’t seem to be putting them off what was clearly a full scale war by now.  
  
As she watched, another group of E88 spotted some ABB, four on each side approaching around a pile of concrete blocks and collapsed roofing. The E88 guys immediately dived for cover after a quick hand signal from their leader, then seconds later before the ABB people even knew they were there, opened fire.  
  
All four of the Asian gang dropped, not even having a chance to shoot back. She squeezed her hands into fists, watching intently as they cautiously moved back into the street, checked the bodies, then looted them of everything they were carrying. One of the ABB twitched a little and the man searching him casually shot him in the head twice then kept on going through his pockets. The swastika armband on his arm was sprayed with blood, but he didn’t seem to notice or care.  
  
Breathing through her nose, Missy kept watching, since she _needed_ to see this. She needed to know that what had to be done really had to be done. Over the next five minutes she saw two more ambushes like the first, one ending in a rout of the E88 forces, the other with both sides ending up dead or badly wounded. She stared as the sole living Empire gang member tried to crawl to cover, making it about thirty feet before collapsing for the last time in a spreading pool of blood.  
  
“This is _my_ fucking city, you bastards,” she said very quietly under her breath.  
  
The girl finally decided she’d seen enough of the foot soldiers, and turned her attention to the highlight of the scene. Roughly in the middle of the vast destroyed area, which got worse and worse as it moved in that direction until literally nothing at all was left in a recognizable state, there was a group of figures furiously fighting.  
  
Lung was obvious, fully transformed into some weird dragon form and at least thirty feet long from nose to tail. He was surrounded by a halo of flame that was radiating so brightly his shape was hard to make out but impossible to miss. Heat rose from him and made the scene beyond shiver and move like a mirage.  
  
He was currently slamming himself against a huge metal dome made of thousands of interlocking metal blades, something like forty feet across, and screaming in a voice that was utterly incomprehensible. Clearly vastly past the point of anything other than rage and destruction Lung reared back and blasted the dome, which she assumed was Kaiser’s work, with a white-hot flame which started to make the steel flow like water in a shower of sparks. Moments later he was hit from the side by a whirling ball of bladed death, Hookwolf himself looking much more dangerous than Missy had ever seen him. Either he’d been holding back or he’d totally lost control. Or both, possibly.  
  
The two monstrous capes rolled over and over, crushing whatever was left into powder beneath them while howling at each other. The dome, forgotten behind them, started cooling down from an orange glow where Lung had been attacking it. She spotted motion to one side and saw something in the foundations of a wrecked building move, then realized that Kaiser was a little smarter than she’d given him credit for.  
  
A large panel of metal, again the typical interlocked blades showing on it, slid away to reveal Kaiser himself and Fenja, the giant cape about half her maximum size. She’d apparently pushed the improvised shield by hand, and Missy could see it was covering the entrance into some sort of cellar, blocking it off from view. Kaiser looked like he was limping but he was regrettably mostly uninjured, and once the way was clear the man climbed up to peer cautiously over the lip of the hole they’d taken cover in. As he did so, Krieg clambered out of the cellar after him, followed by Alabaster.  
  
“Yeah, of course _those_ fuckers would survive,” she grumbled. All four of the Empire capes, which she _really_ hoped was the entire surviving roster, looked towards where Hookwolf was somehow still keeping up with Lung, had a short discussion, then moved slowly in the other direction, keeping low. She wasn’t sure if they were abandoning the battle or merely regrouping. Considering how Kaiser was pointing around, it seemed likely the latter was the case.  
  
She kept an eye on them while looking at the raging fight going on a mile away from her, wondering how long Hookwolf could keep this up. Lung was still visibly if very slowly growing and sooner or later he was going to overwhelm the Nazi cape. She was genuinely surprised it hadn’t happened yet, considering he’d actually held off _Leviathan_ for several hours.  
  
Missy wondered if the Endbringer had been holding back too. That was a scary thought…  
  
Returning to scanning the area, she finally spotted movement that wasn’t Nazi lunatics, crazed rage dragons, or random vicious gang members. Nearly half a mile away on the outskirts of the destroyed area several people seemed to be lurking on another roof, this one some sort of half-wrecked old parking structure, bare concrete columns holding up six floors. The buildings on either side of it had nearly collapsed and one was smoldering, smoke rising from the back windows.  
  
Looking more closely she saw slightly to her surprise that all the people were capes, and ones she recognized. The Undersiders were there, Bitch’s huge dog-lizard things squatting off to one side, which was how she’d immediately realized who they were. They seemed to be talking to a pair of men she quickly worked out were Über and Leet, and off to one side were Glory Girl, who looked like she’d been rolled in charcoal then run through a car wash upside down, and Laserdream, her cousin. Both the New Wave girls appeared absolutely exhausted, and none of the others were much better. Tattletale was holding her head and giving off an impression of being in extreme pain, with Grue holding her up against him, while Skitter kept looking at her, then the distant figure of Lung.  
  
The insect girl’s costume was covered in ash but seemed amazingly intact all things considered, especially as the rest of them were showing a lot of rips and scuffs. All of the entire group had clearly been in the thick of it for some time.  
  
Making a decision, she glanced at Lung, checked where Kaiser’s group had gotten to, which was about two hundred yards from where they’d emerged, and nodded to herself. The E88 capes were clearly bunkering down again, for whatever reason, and would probably stay put for the moment. That was fine by her.  
  
It would save her the effort of going looking for them.  
  
Missy created a warp from her location to the parking structure and walked through it, while all the capes quickly turned to her, apparently very keyed up and ready to fight.  
  
“Vista?” Glory Girl sounded as tired as she looked, but surprised too. “What the hell are _you_ doing here?”  
  
“Putting a stop to this shit because no one else can,” she replied in a hard voice.  
  
They all stared at her, then looked at each other.  
  
“What do you mean?” Laserdream asked, massaging her shoulder which looked like it had been hit very hard with something.  
  
“I’ve had enough of this,” Missy snapped, waving at the massive wasteland in front of them. “Those Nazi bastards and Lung’s idiots are going to wreck the entire city at this rate, they’ve killed hundreds of people at least, last I heard all of them are going to end up with kill orders, and _we’re on our own!_ No one is coming. Not the Triumvirate, not the PRT, not the National Guard, not even the fucking _Tooth Fairy!_ No one else can, or maybe _will_ , do what needs to be done. So I’m doing it myself.”  
  
Every one of them gaped at her, although Skitter was nodding thoughtfully. “Shaker 9, right?” she more said than asked, her swarm voice muted under the clamor coming from the distant fighting.  
  
“That’s what they have me down as,” Missy agreed with a tiny vicious smile. “I think that might be about to go up.”  
  
Regent, his ruffled shirt a mess and his mask cracked, turned to Grue and said, “I’m scared. Hold me.”  
  
“Fuck off you idiot,” Grue rumbled. His face was completely invisible under his helmet but he sounded confused and tired. Tattletale moaned in his arms, rubbing the sides of her head, but squinted sidelong at Missy.  
  
Green eyes blinked, then she paled even more than the pain was causing. “Oh, hell,” the blonde whispered.  
  
Missy looked at her, then walked over to the edge of the top deck and leaned on the wall surrounding it. Footsteps crunched in the debris around her and Skitter joined her. “You really think you can stop this?” she asked, sounding weirdly emotionless but somehow interested too. Far too angry to really be bothered by something that mundane, Missy nodded.  
  
“Yeah. I can stop it for good. People are going to get very upset with me, but I don’t care any more.”  
  
“Because it’s your city too,” Skitter remarked quietly. The younger girl looked up at the older one, who towered over her by a considerable margin, being remarkably tall for a girl.  
  
“Yeah. You know what that’s like...” It was a guess but she was fairly sure.  
  
“I do, yes. And I’m worried that all this is my fault.”  
  
Missy stared at her, then shook her head quickly.  
  
“It’s not _your_ fault. You actually _caught_ Lung, no one’s ever managed that before. Armsmaster is the one he escaped from. And the Protectorate are the ones who _should_ have caught him years ago, before all this could happen. And the E88 too.” She pointed at the scene in front of them. “All that? It could have been prevented. It _should_ have been prevented. It shouldn’t be up to _us_ to fix it, but it is, so I’m going to fix it whether anyone thanks me or not.”  
  
She looked back at Skitter who was regarding her oddly through yellow lenses, the sight intimidating and eerie. “It would have happened sooner or later with or without you, or Armsmaster, or any of us. No one’s bothered to even try to stop it for way too long. So it’s not your fault at all as far as I’m concerned.”  
  
The other girl, after a moment, nodded. “Thanks.”  
  
“It’s true,” Missy shrugged.  
  
More footsteps came as the others wandered over, Grue half-carrying Tattletale who was almost unconscious by the look of her. “What’s wrong with her?” she asked.  
  
“Thinker headache,” he replied after a moment. “She’s pushed herself far too hard today. Saved a lot of lives in the process but she’ll be out for a week when she finally falls over.”  
  
Missy nodded, she’d heard that Thinker headaches could be horrible.  
  
As she was about to ask a question, a bullet whined overhead, the noise intimately familiar to anyone from Brockton Bay. Everyone else except Glory Girl who was standing a few feet away to the right hit the deck, while Missy instinctively set up a warp in front of her which directed the next half dozen rounds back the way they’d come.  
  
“Where did _those_ come from?” Leet yelped, covering his head as more shots came their way, some hitting Missy’s warped space and vanishing again, others going wide and chipping away at the concrete wall they were taking cover under. One hit Glory Girl in the chest and bounced off.  
  
“Two hundred and fifty feet east, about sixty degrees that way,” Skitter replied, pointing off to one side with complete confidence even though she couldn’t see the shooter. Missy scanned the area, immediately spotting a squad of E88 gangers, five of them crouched behind a low wall which was all that remained of a shop or something of that nature. Three were shooting at them with AK-47s and the other two were setting up a larger machine gun on a bipod while this was going on.  
  
“Yeah, I can see them,” she growled. Kneeling down she swung her pack off her back, pulled the pistol out, and flicked the safety off. “And I’m way past the point of caring about rules of engagement. Terrorists shoot at me, I shoot back.”  
  
Pretty much all the others looked at her with varying levels of shock. Bitch, who hadn’t said a thing so far, simply nodded, and Skitter said, “Sounds good to me.”  
  
“You’ll never hit them at this range,” Über commented, sounding a little shocked. “Especially firing downwards.”  
  
Missy looked at him, half-rose to peer over the wall, then ducked into cover again and formed a rather different warp. All the others stared as they were suddenly looking at the startled faces of the five gang members from an apparent ten or fifteen feet.  
  
Raising the gun in a steady two-handed grip like her father had showed her some time ago when he’d tried bonding with her at a local firing range, Missy calmly shot each one of them one after the other in the chest, then dropped the warp. The total elapsed time was about eight seconds.  
  
“Yeah, I cheat,” she replied, suppressing with an effort of will the revulsion that rose in her and giving him a steady look.  
  
“Fuck me,” the young man whispered in shock.  
  
“Can I borrow that for a second?” Skitter asked, holding out her hand. Missy examined her, then handed her the weapon having put the safety back on. Skitter flicked it off again and held the gun above the wall, aimed in a different direction, then pulled the trigger twice. The flat report of the gun echoed around the parking structure once more. “Two more coming this way,” the other girl said, giving her the gun back.  
  
Missy peeked over the wall and saw two bodies lying across the rubble about three hundred feet from them. She stared at Skitter, who shrugged. “I cheat too,” the girl said in an emotionless manner. “If you’re not cheating you’re not trying hard enough.”  
  
“True,” Missy nodded, impressed.  
  
“Oh, god help us, there’s two of them,” Grue sighed.  
  
“I like her. Can we keep her?” Regent put in, causing his team-mate to whack him on the head. “Ow, fuck off, you asshole!”  
  
“Idiot.”  
  
“You just killed five people!” Laserdream looked horrified.  
  
Missy turned to her after a look at Skitter. “Yeah, we did. And if we hadn’t they’ve have tried to kill _us_. As far as I can see _they’re_ killing _everyone_. What else can we do except fight back?”  
  
“But...” The older girl opened and closed her mouth. “We’re heroes! We don’t kill people.”  
  
“The rules have changed,” Skitter said evenly. She waved over her head, behind the wall she was leaning on. “Just look. It’s not hero against villain, it’s a war where those fuckers are one side and _everyone else_ is the other. Right now, there are no heroes and villains, there’s the people who will destroy us all, and _us_.” Even through the weird lack of emotion she sounded tired somehow. “And Vista’s right. No one cares. The only people who care about Brockton Bay are _in_ Brockton Bay and half of _them_ are happy to kill the other half. It’s right in front of you. And if they aren’t stopped, there won’t _be_ a Brockton Bay tomorrow. Even if the Triumvirate bother to turn up eventually it’ll be too late, like it’s always been.”  
  
Missy nodded a little, as this was basically exactly her thinking. The time for following orders was well and truly over since _following_ those orders had led right here.  
  
“Turn that up,” Tattletale, who Grue had carefully propped against the wall and who’d been sitting with her head on her knees, not apparently conscious, suddenly said in a pained voice. She still didn’t move her head, but waved weakly at Missy, who looked at her rather confused for a moment then realized her radio was talking. Grabbing it off her belt she wound the volume up to full.  
  
“ _…been declared. I repeat, by order of Director Piggot acting under general order fourteen, with the full approval of the city administration, a state of emergency has been declared. The illegal gangs known as the Empire Eighty Eight and the Azn Bad Boys, having engaged in acts of terrorism and insurrection, are deemed unlawful combatants from this moment until the emergency is over. All law enforcement personnel within range of this broadcast are notified that the rules of engagement now in force allow immediate lethal response to any attack on them or bystanders. Additionally Director Piggot has authorized kill orders on all surviving Parahuman members of the Empire Eighty Eight and the Azn Bad Boys. Check your assigned channel for further orders. This message will be repeated in five minutes._ ”  
  
The radio went silent, as everyone looked at it with a range of expressions. Laserdream and Glory Girl both appeared stunned while the rest were thoughtful and nervous. Missy lowered the volume to the previous level and put the radio back onto her belt.  
  
“Well, that makes things easier,” she said after a few seconds.  
  
A loud explosion rocked the building, making Regent and Leet both yip a little, then look at each other in an embarrassed way. Turning around, Missy peered over the wall, to see Lung still fighting Hookwolf, the Empire cape somehow still going but clearly starting to slow down, while the draconic cape was getting steadily larger albeit very slowly.  
  
“If you’re going to do something you should probably do it soon,” Skitter commented, also looking.  
  
“What do you think you _can_ do?” Über asked. “It’s fucking _Lung_. _Look_ at him, he’s bigger than _Leviathan_ now. Even Eidolon would probably have trouble with the bastard. At this rate we’re going to have another Endbringer on our hands.”  
  
Missy stood up and turned to face the battling capes, nearly a mile away.  
  
Then she looked up. Very carefully thinking through what she was about to do, mindful of the somewhat spectacular results of her experiments, she tried to work out how much bigger she needed to go.  
  
Another glance at the battlefield made her decide _big_.  
  
No point not doing the job right, after all. And since this was going to get her in a lot of trouble, she might as well do something properly spectacular.  
  
“I can stop this for good,” she replied to Über's question, looking up again and squinting at the sunlight coming through the smoke clouds. “Hey, you know what’s line of sight from here?”  
  
He, and the others, all looked upwards too. “What?”  
  
“Half the universe.” She grinned at him, then concentrated hard.  
  
The sky began to change color, darkening all around them for at least half a mile in all directions.  
  
“Oh, my god, what the...” Leet gaped at the steadily deepening blue of the sky, then looked at the fighting capes, where Lung had just hammered Hookwolf to the ground with a horrifically powerful blow from his tail. A moment later he poured fire so hot it was just white energy onto the other cape, almost certainly finally killing him.  
  
Missy didn’t pay any attention as she was trying to do about four things and once and needed to get it right or there was going to be a hell of a lot more to worry about than Lung. Not even bothering to look when Lung howled in triumph, she kept exerting her power to a greater level than anything she’d ever tried before. It was both hard and weirdly easy, like her power _wanted_ to do what she was asking it to do but wasn’t entirely sure how.  
  
So she showed it.  
  
“Shit, you’re making a fucking huge _lens_ ,” Leet finally shouted in shock. He seemed both terrified and amazed. The sky turned nearly black in a giant circle encompassing the entire battlefield, while the light that she was redirecting ended up in a steadily shrinking and rapidly brightening spot centered on Lung, who was looking around now as if puzzled. She checked and could see that the ground was smoking more and more vigorously inside that area, as the temperature rose higher and higher.  
  
“He’s heat proof, that won’t stop him,” Skitter remarked, watching with interest and apparently impressed.  
  
“I know, this is only step one,” Missy replied, still carefully creating the most complex action her power had ever done. The delicate warp on a vast scale overhead was acting like a lens, just as Leet had surmised, bending light towards Lung and diverting it from everywhere else. On its own this could produce a ridiculously high temperature she knew, during her experiments she’d melted chunks of the quarry she’d practiced in, and for anyone other than the Asian cape would probably be lethal, but in his case she needed to go further.  
  
After only a few seconds the fifty or so yards around Lung was glowing intolerably brightly to the point that nothing at all could be made out through the illumination. Even from here the heat was growing rapidly. Satisfied that it was working, Missy got the next part of the operation going, which resulted in a huge zone centered on Lung suddenly looking like it was being viewed through a dark mirror.  
  
“Oh, god, what’s _that?”_ Über squawked in shock.  
  
“I’m looping space around him back on itself,” she said absently, beginning to feel the strain but pushing forward even so. She was pretty sure that Kaiser and his capes were inside the zone she’d set up, but if they weren’t she’d just have to hunt them down later.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“I don’t want to destroy the whole city,” she replied, not looking away from what she was doing when Leet asked the question. He now sounded fascinated and horrified at the same time.  
  
She could _feel_ the stares on the back of her head but ignored them.  
  
“Destroy… how could _you_ destroy the city?” Glory Girl asked, raising her voice to be heard over the sound of more gunfire somewhere below them, which didn’t seem to be aimed at them this time.  
  
Missy glanced at her and gave her a tiny smirk. “You guys will want to look away now and cover your ears,” she said.  
  
Skitter immediately turned around, apparently taking her at her word, putting her hands over her ears in the same motion. Glory Girl stared, looked at her cousin, then both of them shrugged and did the same. After a few seconds, and a complaint from Regent, the rest followed suit. “So what’s going to happen ne...”  
  
Missy pointed a finger up at the sky, and cut Leet off mid word.  
  
“Bang,” she said.  
  
The flash that instantly followed turned everything totally and silently blue-white. Missy felt her entire body tingle as if she’d been hit with a taser, while several of the others shouted. The light flared impossibly brightly for a couple of seconds and blinked out leaving the sunny day seem dark by comparison. About three seconds after that a sound so loud it wasn’t even really a sound but was more a physical impact blew everyone standing flat on their faces, except for Missy who’d ducked just in time while counting under her breath while keeping her hands clamped over her ears.  
  
Laserdream screamed in shock while Über shouted an obscenity, their voices barely audible through the ringing in Missy’s head. Releasing the last traces of her power, she turned around and looked out across the wrecked area, her head throbbing from both the exertion and the incredible noise.  
  
It had been _much_ louder than her test…  
  
She was dimly aware that the others had regained their feet and were slowly lining up along the wall, but didn’t bother acknowledging them, since she was far more interested in what she’d done.  
  
The entire city seemed to have fallen silent, echos of that incredible blast still coming back from the hills the only sound audible other than the crackling of fires. They simply stared at where Lung had been for nearly a minute without saying a word.  
  
Eventually Über, in an awestruck voice, drawled, “You sure as fuck don’t mess around when you’re pissed...”  
  
She nodded, examining the slightly depressed and brightly glowing area nearly a hundred feet across where no trace of Lung, or anything else for that matter, existed. It was just molten glass, slowly flowing back into the center of a shallow crater, the fused rock, brick, metal, and presumably remains of both capes a bright orange-yellow color. Surrounding this was a much larger area which was completely scoured of anything above ground level, as if it had been bulldozed, all the debris that had been there now in a perfect ring just inside where her huge circular warp had gone.  
  
“What the _fuck_ did you _do?”_ Laserdream finally asked, looking at her with wide eyes set in a white face. “I mean… **_what the fuck did you DO?_** ”  
  
“She shorted out the ionosphere,” a pained voice said from one side, causing everyone to look and see Tattletale, hands over her eyes, lying on her back on the rubble-strewn ground. “The crazy kid electrically linked the upper atmosphere to the ground and made the biggest lightning bolt in history. Christ knows how many millions of volts that was but it completely _vaporized_ Lung, Hookwolf, and anyone else in range.” Her voice was pained and unsteady. “Incidentally, don’t ever do that again near me. You wouldn’t _believe_ what my head feels like...”  
  
She pressed harder on her eyes and moaned.  
  
Everyone turned to Missy, who shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much. We learned in school that there’s a lot of electricity high up in the atmosphere and I figured out how to make it go where I wanted.”  
  
“And the giant lens was to heat the air and make it more conductive,” Leet commented, shaking his head.  
  
“It works without it but it works a lot better _with_ it,” Missy replied. “I didn’t want to miss.”  
  
He looked at her, then back at the slowly cooling glass puddle. “I don’t think you missed,” he said, before laughing a little hysterically. “Jesus Christ. Remind me never to annoy you.”  
  
“Shaker 9 my _ass_ ,” Bitch said, her eyes wide, then went to comfort her dogs which were cowering as far away from Missy as they could get, clear on the other end of the parking area.  
  
Leet was scribbling frantically on a scrap of paper, looking up at the sky every now and then in a rather nervous manner. He studied the results of his calculations, shuddered, and tore the paper into tiny pieces. “You don’t want to know how many terawatts of energy that was, but you really _could_ have wrecked the city,” he said in a horrified voice. “ _Please_ don’t ever do that again.”  
  
She glanced at him, then Skitter, who somehow seemed mildly amused despite her face being entirely invisible.  
  
“Good work,” the older girl said, holding out her hand. Missy shook it without hesitation.  
  
Glory Girl and Laserdream were still staring in horror, both at the distant devastation and Missy in equal measure.  
  
“Thanks for rescuing Armsmaster by the way,” Missy said to Über, who was looking at her like he didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. “I like him.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” he replied, shaking his head. “So now what?”  
  
Missy turned and looked out at the scene in front of them again. “Guess we go find out if any of the gangers are still wanting a fight.”  
  
“And if they are?” Skitter glanced at her.  
  
The younger girl smiled viciously. “You distract them with bees, I call the lightning.”  
  
As they walked off, Leet leaned towards Über. “Do we run now? Or wait until they _really_ start bonding?”  
  
Grue lowered his head and sighed heavily, reaching out and slapping Regent on the head without the other boy even saying anything.  
  
**=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=**  
  
Of course, when Missy finally went back, there was a _lot_ of shouting, but that’s another story.


End file.
